Paper prepared for presentation at the 25th Annual conference of
Indian Association for the Study of Population to be held at IIPS, Mumbai, 11th
to 13th Feb., 2002

Impact of Women’s Education on Fertility: Evidences from
NFHS-II Data

INTRODUCTION:

Among various dimensions of women’s status
education deserves special attention, since, it largely conditions the equality
of women’s lives and is highly susceptible to improvement through policy
intervention.Although, for women’s
education should be promoted primarily on human rights and social justice
grounds, it is widely recognized as one of the most promising catalyst of
sustained fertility decline.Knowledge
on the casual linkages between education and fertility can hence serve as a
valuable policy instrument in the contest of development planning.Over the past decades, the need to promote
women’s education has been repeatedly advocated in both international and
national political forums. The United Nations decade for women: Equality,
development and peace (1976-1985) brought to the forefront of global agenda,
the necessity to achieve full integration of women in society on an equal basis
with man and increased worldwide awareness on women’s educational needs.

Although education has been
unanimously endorsed as fundamental right and as an explicit developmental
objective, women’s access to educational resources remains inadequatein large part of the developing world
(Kelly and Elliott, 1982). In India, a long historical neglect of women’s educational
need has left a legacy of very high illiterate rates, especially among the
older, poor and rural women.During the
past decades the Government as committed itself to expanding women’s
educational facility, raising girls enrolment ratios and guaranteeing equal
access to schooling. As a result, although institutional and legal barriers to
women’s access to education have been increasingly removed, deep rooted
cultural beliefs and social habits that sustained gender inequality have a
prolonged inertia.Despite all
obstacles, education continues to inspire big hopes as the most promising
strategy to enhance women’s status.

Besides its role as a development
strategy, women’s education has long been recognized as a crucial factor in
reproductive behaviours.The World
Population Plan of Action, adopted at the United Nations Plan of Action,
adopted at the United Nations World population Conferences held in Bucharest in
1974, placed special emphasis on the linkages between women’s status and
fertility and stressed the urgency to eliminate discriminatory barriers in the
spheres of education and employment.These recommendation were further strengthened at the International
Conference on Population held in Mexico city in 1984, The promotion of women’s
education and well-being was also a priority theme at the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo. The relationship
between education and fertility has been a constant theme in the demographic
literature.The availability of comparable
data for a wide range of societies in the last three decades have also provided
with a unique opportunity to elucidate the causal linkage between education and
fertility (Cochrane, 1979; Jain, 1981).It became evident that the relationship was largely contingent on the
level of development, social structure and cultural milieu (Dyson and Moore,
1983).Awareness of existing
complexity of the relationship also stimulated in depth exploration of the
underlying mechanisms through which education shapes the biological,
psychological and social context of child bearing.

Education
has been found to delay entry into marriage, tofavour a normative orientation towards smaller families and to
increase awareness, access and acceptability of contraception.However, in the poorest and least literate
societies small improvements in female education initially increase fertility,
by improving maternal health and reducing the duration of breast-feeding and
post partum sexual abstinence.But once
the process of child bearing becomes at least partially, subject to conscious
planning, the relationship between female education and fertility is bound to
be unequivocally inverse.

OBJECTIVE

With the recent availability of the
new round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-II) data the goal of the present
study tries to update the existing evidence on the role of women’s education in
lowering fertility and increasing contraceptive use in various states in
India.Multivariate analysis (a number
of OLS regressions) has been performed to disentangle the impact of women’s
education from other socio economic characteristics.

DATA AND METHODOLOGY

Both NFHS-I and NFHS-II data are used.However, only for eight states of India we
had data of NFHS-II.These states are
Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh , Bihar , Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar
Pradesh and Haryana.So, we have
restricted the analysis to these states only.

Several regression models are estimated for each
state, based on individual data.The
effect of women’s education is assessed in relation to three outcomes:Children ever born (representing actual
fertility), desired family size (proxy for the demand factor) and conceptive
use.Two empirical models are presented
for each dependent variable.In
model-I, women’s education is adjusted for demographic variables i.e. age at
marriage, marital duration, marital duration squared.In model 2, women’s education is adjusted for both demographic
and socio economic variables (urban/rural residence, standard of living index,
type of occupation and SC–ST/others).The size of the regressions coefficients and their level of statistical
significance are observed to measure the relative strength of education. The
shape of the relationship can be ascertained by examining whether the
coefficients increase in the linear and monotonic fashion. The comparison of
regression coefficients in Model-I and Model-II permit the assessment as to
what extent the observed impact of women’s education on fertility is
attributable to socio-economic factors.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Children Ever Born:

Table 1 presents the ordinary least squares (OLS)
regression analysis of cumulative marital fertility i.e. children ever born.
Although there are similarities across the states shown in Table 1, the
magnitude and the pattern of the education-fertility relationship display
certain distinctive features by states. In general, values of regression
coefficients resulted from the analysis of both data (NFHS-I and NFHS-II) are
linearly increasing and most of them are statistically significant (at 1
percent level). These results imply that women’s cumulative fertility can be
substantially reduced by education up to an advanced level of schooling (High
school+). The results i.e. the value of regression coefficients for different
educational groups do not vary much between NFHS-I and NFHS-II for all the
states. However, between the states there is a variation in the value of
regression coefficients. For Gujarat the coefficient value is highest followed
by Haryana, Utter Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In the middle
education category the coefficients are not significant for Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar and for high school+, again for Andhra Pradesh the coefficient remained
insignificant.

The
coefficients in Model-II (after adjustment for demographic and socio-economic
variables) are drastically reduced for certain states like Haryana, Rajasthan
and Madhya Pradesh (both data are indicative). However, for Andhra Pradesh and
Bihar the effect of education is insignificant in the middle and upper educational
strata. Individual education can be less effective in reducing fertility in
context where overall education is low. In states where education is low the
few women that have reached advanced schooling levels are likely to have high
socio-economic status, which might affect the results (states like Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar). Conversely, the strongest effect of
individual education is usually found in societies where women are, on an
average, better educated.

Desired Number of Children:

Table 2 presents the results from
the OLS regression analysis on desired family size. In general, the effect of
women’s education on demand for children is strong in all the states considered
here. According to NFHS-II data, the effect of women’s education on the demand
for children is found stronger (in comparison to the reference group which is
illiterate) for Gujarat, Bihar, Orissa and Utter Pradesh (regression
coefficients have higher value).

After demographic and socio-economic
factors are controlled, the effect of women’s education remains statistically
significant for all states except for Uttar Pradesh in the case of primary and
middle level educational groups. Although the effect of female education gets
attenuated once controls are established, the effect remains strong In most of
the states and displays a linear pattern. As per NFHS-II data, for Andhra
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh only an insignificant effect on fertility preference
is observed, for the primary and middle level schooling groups in the case of
former and for the middle level group in the case ofthe latter. For Haryana, the effect is comparatively the weakest
and non- linear.

Contraceptive Use:

Table 3 presents the results of the analysis of
contraceptive use. Given the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable, a
logit regression model is employed. The sample analysed is restricted to
non-pregnant women currently in union. A comparison of the results of NFHS-I
and NFHS-II data reveals that the association between female education and
contraceptive use has intensified in recent years (the period between two
surveys). As a result, the regression coefficients have turned to be
significant for all states in the lower panel of Table-3 (refer to NFHS-II).
The linearly increasing coefficients across the educational groups indicate the
significant increases in the likelihood of using contraception. With no
exception at all level of education, women having more years of schooling have
considerably higher rates of contraceptive use than women with no formal
education. The effect is higher in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (almost equal
after controlling for demographic and socio-economic factors).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The analysis revealed the negative influence of
education on fertility. In all the states analysed here, fertility had declined
with increased female education. Certain states (Bihar,A.P.) showed the
influence of external factors(family planning programme) in lowering fertility.
Reported differentials in desired fertility are much smaller than observed
differentials in actual fertility. Study documented that better educated women
consistently wanted smaller families. Education thus guarantees changing
expectation and changing aspiration for children.

In many states unwanted fertility are high hence women
are far from having achieved their reproductive goal. Unwanted fertility low
among educated women suggests that education enables reproductive choice and
reduced the gap between desired and actual fertility. Women’s education affects
the ability and willingness to implement the fertility preference. We have seen
strong relationship between education and contraceptive use.

4.Kelly,
Gail P., and Carolyn M. Elliott (1982). Women’s Education in the Third World.
Albany, New York: State University of New York Press

5.United
Nations (1985): Report of the World Conference to Review and Appraise the
Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and
Peace, Nairobi, Kenya, 15-26 July 1985. Sales No. E.85.IV.10.

6.United
Nations (1987): Fertility Behaviour in the Context of Development:
Evidence from the World Fertility Survey. Population Studies, No.100
ST/ESA/SERA/100. Seles No. E.86.XII.5

Table 1:

OLS
Regression Coefficients of the Effect of Wife’s Education on Children Ever
Born